


The Golden Age: A Historical and Cultural Survey

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Academia, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Golden Age (Narnia), Pseudo-History, Worldbuilding, books that don't really exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 19:31:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4491951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An excerpt from the introduction to <em>The Golden Age: A Historical and Cultural Survey</em>, published by the University of Redhaven in the year 1667.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Golden Age: A Historical and Cultural Survey

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the 7/12/15 [15_minute_ficlets](http://15_minute_ficlets.dreamwidth.org) word [#231](http://15-minute-ficlets.dreamwidth.org/59809.html).

The so-called Golden Age of Narnia is best understood not as a distinct historical era but rather as a later attempt to construct a new national ideology in the wake of the Long Winter and its concomitant destruction of both material and performative culture. The Pevensie tetrarchs ruled for a mere fifteen years, much of which was spent rebuilding a shattered land, warding off attempted conquest on several fronts, and mediating the legal and social complications of mass repatriation. Their reign was by no rational standards a time of stability, let alone of prosperity. Their abrupt and still unexplained departure did not tragically precipitate chaos, as legend would have it, but was merely one of a nearly uninterrupted string of crises that began with the Pevensies' arrival in Lantern Waste and continued throughout Lord Steward Peridan's reign. Narnia's political fragility cannot truly be said to have ended until the year 1102, when Lady Steward Evelyn declared herself Queen Evelyn the First of Her Name, thereby raising House Scrapemoss to royal status in law as well as in fact.

Why, then, is such an ephemeral and troubled period remembered as a paradise?

The question can be answered in part by a simple comparison of the Pevensies to their immediate predecessor, Jadis the Usurper, whose dictatorship, enforced by both magical and mundane cruelty, ground Narnia nearly to oblivion over the better part of a century...


End file.
